Someone With A Madness
by Pepper Imp
Summary: Girls as a whole continue to confound Ron, except for Ginny. But for some reason, she's confusing in other ways.


Title: Someone With A Madness  
Author: Aspen (allsingingcrap@hotmail.com)  
Pairing: Ron/Ginny  
Rating: PG-13  
Warnings: ficlet, incesty overtones, more of that tricky present tense!  
Notes: I. Love. Ron/Ginny.  
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns them; I just own their leashes.  
  
  
  
Ginny's knee moves back and forth idly, an unconscious habit of movement that her body falls into while her attentions are otherwise occupied, like the tap of a foot or the twirl of a curl around the tip of her finger. It is arched slightly, not enough to pull her skirt up her thigh, but enough to offer tiny peeks of her knickers; not that Ron's _trying_ to look at her knickers. His gaze keeps sliding back and forth from her knee to her absorbed brown eyes that flick up and down pages of one of Ron's comic books.

It is quiet lately. Dad is always at work, Mum always fretting herself into headaches and resting; Fred and George stay holed up in their room, no doubt re-creating their confiscated stocks. Percy comes home from long hauls at the office exhausted and irritable. Visits from Bill and Charlie have been non-existent so far this summer, though once in a while a letter comes and Mum reads it with her knuckles white before deeming it okay for everyone else to read. Heavy things hang above everyone's heads, and Ron and Ginny both think about Harry every day, exchanging worried looks that need no words to accompany them. Ginny has taken a liking to spending long hours of companionable silence with Ron in his room, sitting against his headboard and writing in her diary -- seldom, but sometimes, she lets Ron read the entries she makes while there, if he can scoot in close enough to see them as she writes -- or reading through Ron's fairly extensive comics collection. Sometimes, they talk in hushed tones about Harry and school and friends, but the topic always comes back to He Who Must Not Be Named, which they both avoid talking directly about purposefully. Often they fall asleep laying on their stomachs on his bed, blushing when they wake up late the next morning a little too close together. Sometimes, Ginny just reads and Ron writes letters to Harry and Hermione or reads through his worn copies of _Flying With The Cannons_ or _Which Broomstick_. Today, he's leaning against the footboard just her opposite and can't seem to keep his eyes on his reading material. Both are full from a rushed dinner and stressful talk over it about Ministry affairs. Dad is over-worked. Percy is more afraid than he lets on. Together, Ron and Ginny are counting down the days till Harry arrives.

Ron reckons, though, that it's been sort of nice bonding with Ginny this summer. She is the same as she has always been, yet so different, and he wonders when that happened. Grudgingly, he guesses that she's growing up, which makes him think about how he's growing up too, and he misses the old days of seeing her drag a doll behind her by its leg, laughing because she put on her dresses backwards with the buttons in front, having to hold her hand when Mum took them out to the market so she wouldn't get left behind, or watching her go red at the mention of Harry Potter. Randomly, Ron remembers how they once built the most fantastic fort out of chairs and bed linens that year they had the house to themselves, and realises how much this summer is like that fort, just the two of them, waiting until something happened, endless summer days down the drain, washed away with each other for their only company.

She _is_ growing up; she'll be in her fourth year when they return to Hogwarts. Even though her hair is still divided into two long strawberry-red plaits, her favourite colour is still pink, and she still collects tinkling music boxes, she has changed. It takes more to make her blush. She is more serious (though still slightly prone to getting the giggles) and has picked up an astonishing bookishness from Hermione, who corresponds with her quite faithfully, sending Muggle fiction and her old textbooks and nonfiction reads she enjoyed. She is, as she has always been, thoughtful, but this thoughtfulness is starting to transcend daydreams and flights of fancy. (Ginny tells him she often thinks about writing a book someday, "when all of this is over.") And -- this always makes Ron's breathing hitch a little -- she's starting to look a bit less like a child and more like a girl, a real _girl_, with a mouth ripe for the tasting, a body that's starting to look a little fuller in some places and a little differently-shaped in others. Ron really thinks these things sometimes, and they keep him up at night afterwards.

He has a sneaking suspicion that Ginny is starting to grow up faster than he is, too.

Sometimes he wonders if she has noticed that as well. Over and over in his mind, Ron flips and investigates and wonders over something she said once, in one of their long hushed meandering talks, about how Ron was really starting to look like Bill. He knows she probably was just teasing him, in her roundabout way, about his hair getting a little longish (since no one has found the time to trim his hair since before school let out), but he can't help but hope it was a roundabout compliment instead. Ron is only fifteen, and is still shooting up and outgrowing hand-me-downs like mad and finding he suddenly has to shave every morning lest he start to look like Charlie (who has just sent a picture of himself sporting a goatee). But in his head, Ron feels like the same person that he's always been, feels like he's light-years behind other boys in his dorm in wanting to deal with girls -- he still flushes and gets angry when anyone says _anything_ about Hermione. Girls as a whole continue to confound him, except for Ginny. But for some reason, she's confusing in other ways.

Like that way she's moving her knee.

Why can't he keep his eyes off of it?

Ron looks at his _Flying With The Cannons_ book with his heart palpitating in sort of a strained way; on page forty-two, Joey Jenkins grins at him and waggles his eyebrows. Ron blinks at him. Nonplussed, Joey gives him an energetic thumbs up and puckers up his lips. Ron's eyes bulge.

"Sod off, you!" he hisses at the book, then shuts it angrily and tosses it off his bed.

"What's wrong?" asks Ginny, looking up with an arched dusty-light auburn eyebrow.

Ron can feel his ears burning. "_Beaters_!" he sputters.

Ginny just grins down at the book. Ron glares at a poster above his headboard of the Cannons, who are all making kissy-faces at him. Then, she dog-ears the already creased pages of her comic book and puts it aside with the little pile of books beside the two.

"I'm going to go take a warm bath," she says, moving one leg aside. 

Ron's cheeks tingle. He purposefully locks his eyes on her face and says, "All right. Still want to nick some sweets from FredandGeorge later?"

"Yeah." Her smile has a devious tilt to it, but her eyes are laughing. She brushes down her skirt. "I'll meet you up again after I'm out."

"Okay," Ron replies as she wanders out with one hand tugging at the back of her skirt that likes to stick up into itself, and shuts his door again, as he likes. With a sigh, he flops over onto his side and glares darkly at the Cannons. "_You're_ no help," he says, then cusses a bit at them for good measure. They just laugh, giving each other noogies and fake snogs. He stares down at his orange bedspread, eyes trailing over wrinkles and over the spine of his book, to the leafed pages of her comic, and -- "What's that?"

He knows the answer even before he murmurs the question -- it's Ginny's tiny diary, homemade, with a quill stuck in the pages, bookmarking her last entry. It's underneath the comic book; she's forgotten it. Slowly, Ron reaches a hand forward and pulls it by the corner out from under the comic. A locking charm glows softly inside the tiny keyhole.

Ron knows the pass charm.

Ginny trusts him.

He reaches for his wand and unlocks it before stopping to think -- he's seen the kind of entries she writes. Notations about owls from friends, the status of the jumper she's knitting for Bill for Christmas, how much she is looking forward to school supply shopping at Diagon Alley and to Harry arriving. Nothing exciting, really. Sometimes, with his head on her shoulder, he watches her write entire entries like that. Inside, next to the spine, are tucked photographs, of Ron, Harry, and Hermione, taken by Colin, and a few of herself also probably taken by Colin. Harry is flushing slightly, Hermione waving to him, Ron grinning a lopsided grin and shaking his head. Ginny is dreaming in class. He turns to where she has bookmarked the diary, only to find -

His own name...

scrawled everywhere...

in almost every sentence...

like they were written by someone with a madness.

At first it makes his heart stop.

But of course, Ginny has been spending every day this summer with him, so of course the entries aren't about anything other than...

How grown-up he is becoming. How she is positive he likes Hermione, so Ginny tries to never mention him to her, for fear of encouraging her. How he listens to her and no one else ever does. How she feels warm and safe in his room, how sweaty her palms get when he rests with his head on her shoulder and watches her write.

How fiercely proud she is of him.

How she can tell him anything.

Anything except _this_.

Hands shaking and heart going and adrenaline making him half blind, Ron fumbles to page one and skims through her entries, sad fitful entries about Harry, entries about school and dreams and short, one-sentenced entries about how hot Tom's stare always was and how much she trembles when she thinks about it, eyes searching out his name, which came in increasing numbers starting with the Yule Ball, then the second task, then dominating almost each entry made all summer. Even entries he had watched her write seem to be full of "Ron"... he had never noticed.

On a split-second instinct, Ron shuts the diary back up, shoves it under his pillow, and then stands on his bed to rip down Chudley Cannons posters, who are all looking at him knowingly with seven leering faces per sheet. One by one, he rolls them up and puts them in his tiny closet. After that, he strides around his rug in circles, still shaking like a leaf. After a few minutes of calming himself, Ron opens his door and heads towards the bathroom.

"I'm in the bath," rings Ginny from within after he knocks, and Ron gulps.

"Well - shut the curtain - 'cause I'm coming in," Ron blurts through the door, and after a moment, opens the door and steps into the warm, steamy, fragrant bathroom. Then he clicks the door closed behind him.  
  
  
  
- Fin  
  



End file.
